The Cycle, Vol 2, No 16
Articles in this issue
- The Cycle previews the upcoming New York spring meeting of the L.A.W. Board of Officers, expecting the largest attendance ever; all the Buffalo amendments will come before it, potentially bringing radical changes to League affairs.
- Thomas Stevens, who left San Francisco on 18 April 1884, arrives back from the other direction on 7 January 1887, completing the first bicycle circumnavigation of the globe despite being forced to deviate from his original route.
- The Massachusetts Club's Thursday athletic entertainment featured heavy dumbbell work by Messrs. Williams, Farrell, and Barr — including a 100-pound one-arm press — sparring exhibitions by six pairs, and an exciting bout of broadsword fencing by Sergeant Dymond and Corporal McCracken.
- The American racing team visiting England comprises W. M. Woodside, W. J. Morgan, E. A. Savage, and Albert and Henry Schock; Woodside plans to challenge Richard Howell to at least five short-distance races, and Morgan will challenge Fred Lees and Thomas Battensby.
- List of cycling patents granted 4 January 1887, covering bicycles and velocipedes by inventors including F. W. Brown and C. Kramer of Albany, T. B. Jeffery of Chicago, and Wm. F. Wuterich of Meriden.
- "Daisie" presents a ladies' cycling records column, sharing mileage reports from correspondents including "Minimum" (who rode a tricycle for only six weeks in spring 1886) and the remarkable distance record of Mrs. J. W. Smith of Orange, N.J., who logged 2,643½ miles in 1886.
- Philadelphia cycling correspondent "Argus" reports on the Association for the Advancement of Cycling's debt-free finances and road improvement work, the thriving Century Wheelmen club, various new club formations, and preparations for the L.A.W. Board meeting in New York.
- A table showing the 1886 mileage totals for three couples from the Orange Wanderers — including J. W. Smith's combined 4,709 miles and Mrs. L. H. Porter's 2,305 miles — with the note that record-breaking was never the aim, only recreation and health.
- A member of the Chelsea Club successfully argues against a single expensive hotel dinner, persuading the club to spread the same budget across four modest suppers at their local hotel instead — one at each meeting for four months.
- The Cycle reprints an account from the Union explaining why American champions Hendee and Rowe did not race each other until the Springfield tournament: both men separately asked the Pope company to keep them apart, fearing the other's superiority, and the company honoured its promises despite public accusations of manipulation.
- E. Y. Judd of the Connecticut Club devised a simple winter training rig — two grooved wooden rollers set between oak planks on the floor — that lets a rider pedal his own bicycle indoors with effort approximating road riding; he offers no patent and invites others to copy it.
- Fred A. Woodman of Chelsea logged 3,708½ miles in 1886, with fellow club members G. H. Danforth (3,400 miles), W. S. Fracker (3,300 miles), and L. H. Frost and E. P. Pratt (2,600 miles each) also posting strong annual totals.
- The New South Wales Cycling Union voted 33 to 11 to retain "makers' amateurs" and agents as bona fide amateurs; trick rider W. S. Maltby rode a unicycle one mile in 4 min. 34½ sec. on the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
- A comic tale reprinted from the Tricycling Journal: a cycling club's secretary wages a prolonged and increasingly farcical campaign to admit tricyclists, only to discover that a new committeeman named Smith has been smuggling extra black ballot-balls to blackball every tricycling candidate and steer them all to the rival Duffersville Tricycling Club.
- The weekly miscellany column opens with a satirical poem, "Apostrophe to a Calendar," mocking the Pope Manufacturing Company's calendar advertisement, then runs a stream of short cycling notes: J. S. Prince's wager against Schock's six-day record, club dinners, Massachusetts Division encampment plans, league uniform dyeing, and other gossip.
- The Massachusetts Division officers held a successful banquet at the Quincy House; key business included accepting an invitation to encamp on Martha's Vineyard in summer 1887, referring the danger-board sign question back to committee after Mr. Kennedy Child's remarks on malleable-iron signs, and voting $100 for the chief consul's annual expenses.
- The St. Louis Ramblers Bicycle Club unanimously voted to apply for admission as a body to the Missouri Club, reasoning that combining the two most powerful western cycling clubs would make the Missouri Club one of the greatest cycling organisations in America and maximise their joint impact on the upcoming L.A.W. meet.
- With snow and ice making riding impossible, the New Haven Bicycle Club reports a doubled membership, a new pool table, and officers elected for the year; the new New Haven Toboggan Club has already drawn 250 members and opened its forty-foot chutes.
- The L.A.W. Bulletin's membership table for the end of 1886 shows New York leading with 1,747 members and a national total of 10,264, nearly double the previous year; Massachusetts grew 144 per cent from 591 to 1,444.
- English cyclist Fred Wood arrived in Sydney, Australia, from San Francisco on 14 November and planned to remain several weeks to compete in projected races.
- The A.C.U. Racing Board disallowed the Hampden Park bicycle records claimed by F. F. Ives and W. A. Rhodes on a technicality — the certificate did not adequately prove that the required seven days' notice had been given — though the board did not doubt the records themselves.
- Club election results from across the country: the Boston Club re-elects President Hodges and votes to remain in the League; Salem, Springfield, Syracuse, Bay City Wheelmen, Lynn Cycle Club, Pottstown, Waterbury Ramblers, Allegheny Cyclers, Rambler Cycle Club of Baltimore, New Haven, Waltham Ramblers, Melrose Cycle Club, and Bay City Wheelmen all report their newly elected officers.